Dekaron

Dekaron Overview

Dekaron is a fast paced action MMORPG. The game labels itself as an arcade style action MMORPG, which is a fairly accurate description, as the game’s combat is smoothly animated and polished. The game has a strong emphasis on PvP as the game has open PvP in certain zones and a dueling system everywhere else. The game’s varied skill tree system has an incredible array of skills to learn, so the game is sure to be varied. The game has

Azure Knight: The Azure Knight is the traditional melee archetype with a primarily melee focus and self buffs.

Segnale: (Female) The Segnale serves as primarily a support class with healing and buff capabilities and several strong debuffs.

Incar Magician: (Female) Incar Magicians are the traditional ‘wizard’ archetype with the ability to cast powerful offensive spells. They’re capable of using both wands and staves.

Segita Hunter: (Female) The Segita Hunter is basically an ‘archer’ class that can deal great damage from a distance but are more vulnerable in close range combat. They can use Bows or Crossbows for ranged attacks and daggers for melee oriented combat.

Vicious Summoner: Vicious Summoners are a mix of the ‘rogue’ and ‘druid’ archetypes, as they are capable of summoning powerful pets to assist them in battle, but also have the ability to use twin blades in melee combat.

Bagi Warrior: Bagi Warriors are the main ‘warrior’ archetype as they are the most capable at absorbing damage and ‘tanking’ monsters. They are simmilar to the Azure Knight, but tend to have more hitpoints at the expense of attack power.

Aloken: Aloken use spears for melee damage and offers multiple buffs and spells to assist themselves and their allies.

Dekaron Screenshots

Dekaron Feature Video

Full Review

Dekaron Review

By, Omer Altay

(Note: Review was written when game was still called 2Moons.)

2Moon’s is definitely one of Acclaim’s most enjoyable MMORPGs. The game is known as ‘Dekaron’ in Europe and Asia. The game’s fast paced and smooth gameplay coupled with its large selection of skills and talents make for an enjoyable MMORPG experience. At first look, Dekaron looked a lot like a generic MMORPG experience, but playing the game for a bit made me appreciate the game’s polished combat animations and overall varied gameplay.

Hold on there, This is for Mature people only!
For those that are turned off by excessive gore, you should be warned; Dekaron is one of the bloodiest MMORPGs out there, which doesn’t exactly mean a lot, but I figure I’d provide a fair warning. If you’re borderline on the ‘excessive gore’ issue, I’d like to point out that the game’s warnings are a bit excessive, you won’t find any more blood in Dekaron that you won’t find in any MMORPG, except for perhaps Requiem: Bloodymare, but that game labels itself as a horror MMORPG, so there’s bound to be excessive gore in it.

Bad Moon Rising? Expedition? What?
If you ever went to the Dekaron official page I’m sure you’ve heard the words ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘Expedition’. The site never explicitly explains what ‘Bad Moon Rising’ or ‘Expedition’ really is, which doesn’t make much sense, because they’re expansion packs. You’d imagine a publisher would want to slap the word ‘expansion pack’ everywhere they could if they were updating their game, but for some odd reason Acclaim opted not to do so. Both ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘Expedition’ are massive free content updates from Acclaim which added new quests, instance dungeons, items, monsters and a whole lot more. Seeing a publisher regularly release massive content updates says a lot about the company behind the game, they clearly care about their users.

Variety Galore.
One impressive aspect of Dekaron it the game’s incredible amount of variety. There are six playable classes in the game; they are Azure Knight, Segnale, Incar Magician, Segita Hunter, Vicious Summoner and Bagi Warrior. A seventh class, Aloken, is set to be released within the first few months of 2009. Having six distinct classes is a quite a feat these days, as most MMORPGs only have a handful, and the fact that Dekaron has a ‘summoner’ archetype is great, because most games today stick to the generic archetypes that are incredibly overused. Each of the game’s six playable classes have their own unique skill trees, which wouldn’t be at all impressive in and of itself, however each skill tree has a staggering amount of skills that can all be leveled up multiple times. The large selection of skills helps to distinguish players from each other. Unlike other MMORPGs, It’s rare to find someone that has the exact same build as you.

Ugh! Why do games do this?
Races and gender are locked to your class in Dekaron, which doesn’t make any at all. How much more ‘programming’ could it have taken to allow players to choose their gender rather than the game forcing whatever the developers chose down your throat? If you want to play as an ‘Incar Magician’ which is basically the ‘wizard archetype’ your character has to be female. The developers are either trying to tell us that all of the races in Dekaron reproduce asexually or they were too lazy to program a simple feature. Aside from gender’s being determined by your class, your class also determines your race. This is really only a minor issue, but it still surprises me that developers can spend all this time and money in creating a game, but can’t spend the tiny bit to fine tune it.

First Impressions
When I first logged in and started playing Dekaron, I was quickly impressed by the game’s basic controls and combat. You can move around by using both the WASD keys as well as the left mouse button for when you need to travel long distances. The game’s combat mechanics are surprisingly fluid and fast paced. Each successful attack on your enemy stuns them for a moment and knocks them back. The game does a remarkable job making you ‘feel’ as if you’re progressing very fast, because the game’s numbers scale very quickly. New players start off by doing 20-30 damage, but within an hour or so of leveling can start hitting for 200+ damage a hit. The game’s fast paced experience gain and quick damage scaling does a great job of in grabbing your attention and holding it. Each ‘level up’ in Dekaron grants you five stat points and a single skill point. Depending on your class, each of the game’s five stats, strength, dexterity, health and spirit will have different effects on your character. Putting one point into strength for a Azure Knight for example will grant the Knight more attack power than putting a single point into the same stat for a Incar Magician. The only other game that has a similar system to this is Twelve Sky.

Pee Vee Pee
Dekaron certainly places a strong emphasis on PvP, as the game has many open PvP zones. While traveling outside of the game’s safe zones, you can be attack by anyone at anytime without consent, so be prepared to defend yourself or travel with a friend when you’re far from safe zones, otherwise you just might be jumped by another player in a bad mood. The game penalizes player killers, or PKers, by penalizing them ‘player kill’ and ‘Inclination’ Points. Be warned, even though killing a few players here and there won’t have any severe consequences, killing too many players will lead town guards to attack you. The game’s guards don’t screw around either, they’re almost impossible to outrun, have infinite hit points and do massive damage. The only way to reduce your ‘player kill’ or ‘Inclination’ points is to serve time in the game’s jail. At this point murders can either serve their time or bribe the guards to reduce their sentence, but either way the game does penalize players who go on excessive murdering rampages. The game’s open PvP makes for a fun environment though, as you’ll always have to stay on your toes.

Final Verdict: Good
2Moon’s attractive PvP elements and overall varied gameplay create a fun MMORPG experience. The fact that the game gets consistent content updates from the publisher reassures me that the game will still be around and fresh in the coming years.